


You know my name

by Beginte



Series: Work and Play [17]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Camille is 009, Established Relationship, James Bond is a certified drama queen, M/M, feelings happen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 10:20:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12768969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beginte/pseuds/Beginte
Summary: “Or is it Q who’s going to be Mr Bond?” Alec merrily ploughs on, right into the carefully cultivated flowerbed of Bond’s repressed problem. “No, I think you’ll be Mr Q after all. Say, Jamesy,” Alec’s voice takes on a confidential tone as he slides an inch closer, and there’s that brick-like subtlety again. “Since we’re best mates and all... just between us - what is Mr Q’s name?”-In which everyone assumes Bond knows Q's real name. (Everyone is wrong.)





	You know my name

It’s Camille who asks first, because she’s as irreverent and direct as Bond. There’s a reason they’re friends, after all.

“So what’s his name?” she asks over a plate of chips she apparently decided he’s going to share with her and he isn’t yet irritated enough to stop her.

Bond watches her eat the chips in the unflattering lighting of the MI6 canteen. Normally, everyone is wary to risk the oftentimes suspect food here, but every now and again circumstances conspire (or mildly suicidal mood strikes) and Bond ventures out into the canteen to take his chances. The chips seemed harmless enough tonight.

“Whose name?” he asks, playing dumb, because there’s only one ‘he’ Camille (or anyone) could be asking him about.

Camille gives him a deeply unimpressed look and steals another chip.

“Please,” she shoves it into her mouth. He’s getting close to stopping her. “So?”

“So what?” he hasn’t driven anyone mad in almost twelve hours (Q being his latest victim) and he should probably hurry up to meet his daily quota.

She huffs and punishes him by taking three chips all at once.

“Q,” she wipes the grease off her fingers on her track bottoms. “You’ve been shagging for a while. Rumour has it you’ve sort of moved in,” Bond instinctively bristles at something actually personal to him being discussed quite so... _blatantly_. “He _had to_ tell you. I want to know.”

“What makes you think I know his name?”

“So what, you’re gasping out a letter of the alphabet when you’re in the throes of passion?” she smirks crookedly, dark fringe in her eyes (how she sees anything on missions is beyond him).

“I don’t gasp,” he informs her (not entirely truthfully, but she needn’t know). “And since you won’t be in the throes of passion with _him_ , let alone with both of us, I don’t see why you’d need to know his name.”

She huffs, mutinously flicks his plate hard enough to make it jump and spill some chips onto the chemically-clean smelling table, and gets up and leaves him be. Quietly smug, Bond finishes the chips and finds that victory is the best seasoning to serve them with.

* * *

Tanner, at least, has the decency to hide his curiosity behind paperwork; he doesn’t, however, have enough decency to make the pretence an even remotely believable one. The fact that he personally shows up in Bond’s cubicle of an office is an instant and massive tell that the folder in his hands has nothing to do with the real reason why he’s here.

“Tanner,” Bond greets him wryly.

“James,” it’s definitely personal, then. And most likely unprofessional. “I come bearing paperwork, I’m afraid.”

“I see.”

“Standard stuff regarding your latest exploits,” Tanner offers the folder. “Try to be a bit more thorough? Those things _do_ actually get read, you know.”

Bond’s mouth twists in a wry smile.

“I’ll do my best,” he says the same thing whenever Q asks him to please not chuck yet another gun away ‘ _like an empty sweet wrapper, 007′._

“I’ll rest assured,” Tanner can be just as wry when he wants. “Speaking of paperwork - I had a very interesting file on my desk yesterday.”

“Did you, now,” Bond smirks perhaps a little belligerently, because of course Tanner would come and discuss this.

“Quite. Finally designated a next-of-kin - congratulations, James. It’s only taken you two resurrections to do that.”

“Well, the third time’s the charm, isn’t it.”

“You listed him as Q, though. Specified as ‘Quartermaster of MI6′, followed by his MI6 ID number.”

“I have,” Bond keeps a steady eye contact, hoping that Tanner will eventually get discouraged. He should have known occasional pub outings for a beer and some idle talk would eventually land him in a conversation like this.

“Q,” Tanner repeats. “Not... anything else?” and well, that’s hardly subtle, is it.

“He’s the Quartermaster and his personal data is highly classified. That document won’t see light outside of MI6 anyway, so everything is as it should be. I’d have thought the Chief of Staff would be aware of that...”

“Sod off, Bond.”

“Thank you for bringing me the paperwork, Bill.”

Bond watches Tanner walk away, and while he’s pleased with another victory, he doesn’t fail to register a brief, needling sensation left by this conversation.

He’s always enjoyed the thrill of bluffing, verbally sparring and tricking thoughts into his opponent’s head, holding a poor hand but with a few well-chosen words making everyone else at the table think he’s got the winning cards and fold. And yet right now, there is no satisfaction in winning with poor, useless cards. No pleasure in making others think he has all the information and simply won’t be sharing it.

There is no sense of victory in the fact that he still has no idea what Q’s name actually is.

* * *

It’s Alec’s turn asking that needles the most.

It’s a rather empty Wednesday evening; Q has been stuck in command of a mission for ten hours now and is expected to continue being stuck for at least another ten. He’d sent Bond home when it became clear he’ll be spending the night at Six. He’ll probably crash for a bit on the cot in his office (Bond has a fondness for that cot ever since he and Q had made much better use of it on a few enjoyable occasions) and continue working the hardest of everyone in the Branch until the mission is over and 004 is either on his way home or dead.

As luck would have it, Alec Trevelyan (006) is back from some ‘deeply joyless’ (his words) three months undercover in Russia featuring occasional trips to outer Mongolia, so they head to a pub together for a pint and some proper catching up.

The pub is an old, quietly upscale place where Bond and Alec often enough take their post-mission shakes or victories to decompress with good beer or better liquor. The scene is familiar and relaxing, and Bond is pleased to sip his beer and have his oldest friend back. It’s all going well, Alec flamboyantly embellishing his daring adventures and showing off a new scar he’d got from an unwisely petted eagle he was invited to hold in Mongolia; Bond recounts a few exciting incidents from his own missions, brings Alec back into the MI6 gossip loop, and then Alec ruins everything when he mentions he’s looking for a new flat.

“You know,” Alec says with all the conversational subtlety of a sack of bricks, “I heard your flat might be on the market soon,” he smirks at Bond over his beer.

“Did you,” Bond says, so dryly that he needs to chase it down with a sip of his own pint. Apparently, Alec is not as much out of the MI6 gossip loop as Bond had thought. He supposes his and Q’s arrangement must be quite high on the list of top office gossip items. He feels oddly smug yet not at all flattered by it.

“Mhm. And it’s a nice flat too. I’d be happy to take it off your hands once you completely move in with our ravishing Quartermaster.

Bond thinks about Q all rumpled with sleep and with murder in his far-sighted eyes as he steeps his first earl grey in the morning, loose track bottoms and slippers on, and he hides a smile in his beer. Oddly enough, the little shit looks ravishing then too.

“Well, it’s good that you’ve got all of this worked out so nicely,” he remarks, not particularly bothering to hide his sarcasm. And also hoping to deflect from the increasingly personal direction this conversation is taking. At least it’s Alec, though god knows this is indeed a _small_ mercy.

“I do,” Alec looks irritatingly pleased with himself. “I still haven’t settled on what I’ll do with the spare bedroom though. For now, I’m a bit torn between an at-home gym and a sex dungeon.”

“Well, why don’t you just flip for it.” Alec is clearly trying to goad him, and Bond is determined not to let him.

“I suppose I could always combine the two somehow... There’s still time. Though I wonder - just _how much_ time before I can take over the flat, Jamesy?”

Bond licks the beer off his lips and turns to squint at Alec with the smallest hint of a wry, amused, _irritated_ smile. Alec grins over his pint and, naturally, proceeds where most people would back away. There never was a 00 agent known for their self-preservation instinct.

“How long before you’re well and truly out of there, properly living in some high-tech flat with a classified address, watering plants, cooking dinners and being Mr Q?”

“I’ll be sure to let you know.”

“Or is it Q who’s going to be Mr Bond?” Alec merrily ploughs on, right into the carefully cultivated flowerbed of Bond’s repressed problem. “No, I think you’ll be Mr Q after all. Say, Jamesy,” Alec’s voice takes on a confidential tone as he slides an inch closer, and there’s that brick-like subtlety again. “Since we’re best mates and all... just between us - what _is_ Mr Q’s name?”

And there it is. Bond stops his fingers from pressing into the glass holding his pint.

“Why don’t you ask him yourself,” he says, because all of a sudden it’s the best he can come up with.

Alec looks at him, eyes a little narrowed and all of a sudden very perceptive, like he’s reading in a language he’s not quite fluent in, and Bond studiously keeps his face carefree - or as close as he can manage. But it’s too late and Alec knows him too well. And now he knows that there’s _something_ the matter, and for a moment Bond isn’t sure he’ll be able to stand this.

Then Alec frowns, takes a large sip of his beer, and doesn’t say anything, which only makes the whole thing worse, because it means he knows he’s stumbled upon a forbidden subject and therefore a sensitive spot on Bond’s otherwise tough skin.

“Do hurry up and move out,” Alec says. “I’m about to be thrown out of the Savoy.”

Bond scoffs and takes a sip of his own beer. At least he can be sure Alec would never be callous and misunderstanding enough to _pity_ him. He appreciates that and promises to expedite the moving process as much as his and Q’s stunted emotional skills allow.

* * *

As per usual in Bond’s life, things rather deteriorate after that, mostly inside his own head, only this time he reckons he’s doing remarkably well in not immediately reaching for the bottle to try and crawl into it in search for solutions. He hates Camille, he hates Bill, and he hates Alec. Especially Alec.

And, as Bond’s luck would have it, he’s down between missions, so he has plenty of time to stew over things and gradually snowball them out of proportion while Q is stuck in Q-Branch running some frightfully delicate operation and trying to stop 001 from getting herself killed just fifteen months away from mandatory retirement. (Bond hopes Q succeeds. He doesn’t think he can cope being the oldest 00 left on current roster once she goes.)

Bond was fine for a while, but then the downtime came with Q busy at work, and now he’s sitting in the flat in semi-darkness, not even bothering to turn on the lights as the evening approaches, and overthinking things. He’s bothered, and he never was bothered about it before until Camille and Bill and Alec trampled all over whatever remnants of peace of mind he has, and now he’s bothered that he’s _bothered_ , which usually is the place where he turns to the bottle.

The thing is, Bond’s been fine all this time. Q is Q and it never even occurred to him that he might be called anything else. Logically, he of course knows there is a very carefully erased name to go with a very carefully erased identity, but he never thought about it. Q is Q and Bond can’t understand why would Camille or Bill or Alec get so obsessively curious to the point where they would actually ask him. And yet he didn’t tell them he has no idea what Q’s name actually is. And Bond is too old and too good at his job to lie to himself and pretend it was just a spy’s (or a gambler’s - which is the same thing, really) reflex to hide one’s hand, especially when it’s a poor one.

Bond has never felt like it mattered before, so he’s all the more annoyed that it suddenly almost feels like it does. It’s not curiosity, it needles far too irritatingly for that. All the same, Bond pushes it back, because that’s what he does.

The dam cracks about a day later, when Q is back and has slept off the nerves of steel marathon that 001′s exploits have brought on. They’re finally getting to do some catching up, Q more than eager to ride out the remainders of adrenaline in his system, and ordinarily Bond would be delighted by the impish look in Q’s eyes as he straddles Bond and works their clothes off, but the issue is just under his skin, stinging and not letting him enjoy the proceedings. Which is very annoying, because sex with Q is something that definitely deserves Bond's undivided attention.

Q leans in to nuzzle kisses into Bond’s neck, slowly trailing down towards his chest, and Bond sighs, tipping his head back against the pillows, closing his eyes for a minute and trying to focus on the way Q’s hair tickles his collarbone, the warmth of Q’s skin under his hands... But the issue has congested in his chest, nudging him with every breath, and Bond knows he has to do this, he has to pick at the scab until everything turns painful and ugly.

He opens his eyes, gaze travelling over the charming mass of Q’s hair, his broad, elegant shoulders; he relishes the kisses pressed to his skin, slides his hands up Q’s arms and over his upper back to feel the smoothness one more time before-

“Why won’t you tell me your name?” It’s spoken softly, murmured quietly into the soothing hiding place of half-dark that fills their bedroom.

“Hm?” Bond can’t see Q’s face, just the wildness of dark curls as kisses are pressed to his sternum in a way that makes something flutter in his heart.

“Your name, Q,” he tries again, a little sharper this time.

“What about it?” now Q is stalling, lust haze lifting from his eyes as he sits up, straddling Bond’s hips.

Pre-emptively, Bond grounds him, running his hands up and down Q’s arms. It’s a signal things aren’t bad or too serious; it’s a lie.

“Why won’t you tell me what it is,” he makes it a clarification, not a question, because he abhors asking, especially about something that could make him seem so... _needy_. And the terrible truth is, he is needy, he needs that tiny little fact about Q. He needs to _know him_.

Q frowns, like Bond is not making sense somehow.

“It’s Q,” he says it like he suspects Bond has had a head injury that’s presently making itself known; sometimes, Bond thinks Q is a shite liar and then sometimes there are disturbing moments that make him think Q is the greatest actor in the world.

Anger flickers somewhere inside Bond’s chest, because Q is stalling. It feels too much like a strategy. And that hurts.

“You know what I mean,” Bond growls. “Your _real_ name, Q. The one that’s erased from all records,” it feels odd to say that, because Q _is_ Q. For a moment, Bond feels terribly lost, no longer knowing why he’s pushing for this in the first place. It only makes all of it feel worse.

Long eyelashes dip and cover the always expressive green eyes; a cool mask slides into place in a way that’s all too familiar from Bond’s mirror, and Q gathers his thoughts. At least now Bond knows he won’t be playing games anymore. Elegant fingers trace the waistband of Bond’s boxers, but he ignores it, choosing to believe that it’s a pensive, grounding gesture on Q’s part, not an attempt at derailment by exploiting Bond’s weakness.

“It... _is_ Q,” Q finally speaks, voice soft yet steady with unshakeable certainty of facts. It’s that alluringly charismatic way in which he talks, the way of someone aware of their own competence.

“That’s not-”

“That’s not what you meant, I know,” says Q, then swallows, thinking. “But it’s what I meant. Q isn’t just _what_ I am, it’s _who_ I am. It’s not just 007, it’s also James,” he smiles, a little crooked, a little helpless, and Bond can’t help but feel so painfully, unbearably fond of him, a sudden burst of warmth among worry and unease. “I’ve been juggling names since I was fifteen. Earlier than that if you count online identities. There were names I came up with that I was more attached to than the name given to me by the group home people when I was left with them as an infant. It’s not even the same name M knew me under when she plucked me from MI5. But yes, she knew that other name too.”

Bond lies prone on his back, letting Q speak, words dropping slowly, each one carefully thought through. Q’s eyes meet his, hesitant.

“If someone called out my _original_ name on the street, I don’t think I’d even feel the impulse to turn around and look. I don’t think I’d feel anything, really,” he continues, and then shrugs, almost apologetically. “It’s just not who I am. I’m not sure it’s who I’ve ever been, to be honest,” he admits, and that might be a bit too much for Bond to wrap his head around when almost naked and with a beautiful man sitting on him. “I know how much your name means to you - and it means a lot to me to call you ‘James’,” Q says, and he may as well have just punched the air out of Bond’s lungs in the softest, kindest way imaginable. “I can tell you those names, all of them, if you really want me to,” he adds, quicker now, words pouring out hotly, eyes earnest. “I can. But they don’t _mean_ anything to me. And- I don’t want them to mean anything to you either. Because I’m Q, and I wouldn’t want you calling me anything else. Nothing else would mean as much as Q does.”

And well, what could Bond possibly say to that? Even if he knew, there’s something suspiciously tight lodged in his throat, so he just smiles at Q, because he needs to let him know it’s alright, it’s all good, he _understands_ , in his own way, even if he’s still carefully searching for words and coming up pathetically empty.

“You met me as Q. I am Q.”

Q isn’t a romantic, Bond knows. Or, at least, Q doesn’t consider himself to be one, even though Bond has collected some clear evidence to the contrary - but Q certainly isn’t a romantic in the traditional, conventional sense. Not one bit. He doesn’t do flowers and doesn't offer candlelit dinners (though he enjoys them when Bond offers), and 14th February is just a Tuesday to him. And yet this right now seems to be another one of Q’s romantic moments; something important and weighed down with meaning, an issue close to his heart that he tries his best to express and reassure Bond of. Looking up into his solemn, almost beseeching eyes, Bond is rendered mute with the importance of it, with the effort Q makes - for him, all for him.

There is something unbearably caring about it, and Bond knows he must do his best to honour that, this care that Q puts into this moment, into him. Breath catching, he thinks he’s never felt this cared for in his entire adult life.

Bond nods slowly, hands sliding up Q’s back, and then he nods again, buying time, trying to find something that would put Q at ease, something that will leave no doubt that he knows what Q is trying to say and that he himself is back at ease and show how much he understands and appreciates what Q is trying to give him. Or rather make him realise what he already has.

“Q,” he finally says simply, perhaps a touch raspy, a small smile on his lips and fondness in his eyes.

A smile brightens Q’s face, making his eyes shine and Bond’s chest feel light again.

“James,” says Q in return. And then he leans in and kisses him.

* * *

“So you still won’t tell me?” Camille asks a month later, while they’re watching a mark on a mission far from home. Bond is in charge of listening in via a previously planted bug; Camille is in charge of making half his chicken teriyaki gradually disappear from his plate. She’s very efficient.

“Tell you what?” he asks, even though he knows.

“What’s Q’s name,” she blatantly takes the best, juiciest piece.

Bond smiles, squints into the sun warming his face, and enjoys the peaceful brightness in his chest.

“It’s Q.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! I'm happy with this one. The title, obviously, comes from the Casino Royale song by Chris Cornell.  
> Shout-out to the lovely [Castillon02](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Castillon02/pseuds/Castillon02) for helping out and generally being lovely!


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